1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer networks. More particularly, the present invention relates to web pages on a network, such as the Internet, that display advertisements, and a system and method to monitor user interaction with the advertisements.
2. Description of the Related Art
The “Internet” or the “World-Wide-Web” is a medium that is increasingly used for advertising products and services. There are many commercial websites that provide individual interactive “pages” to a user on the Internet and the user can interact with the web pages of the website through the graphic-user interface (GUI) of the browser program resident on the computer of the user. Many websites provide useful information to users without charges to the user and the website hosts rely exclusively on advertising income to fund their continuing presence on the Internet. The advertisements are typically in separate, predefined spaces (i.e., areas or locations) on the web page, an example being a “banner ad,” and the advertisements can include Java applets or other executing programs to provide motion and sound to the specific advertisement. The advertisement space can also serve as a link to the website of the particular advertiser of that advertisement such that the user can “click on,” or activate the link to move the browser to the advertiser website.
For the website hosts that are funded by advertisement space sales, the value of the advertising space is often based on the number of impressions the website host can provide to the advertiser for the specific advertisement on the web page. Thus, website hosts desire to accurately measure the number of users who see the advertisements and how long each advertisement impression lasts in order to better rate advertising effectiveness for Internet advertisers. Unfortunately, there are no effective tools for obtaining these essential measurements, and as a result, advertisers are often wary about committing significant advertising dollars for web page advertisements.
One example of a current method to rate web page advertisement space effectiveness is called a “Click-through” ratio. A “click-through” ratio is defined as the number of users who “click on,” or activate, a specific advertisement to the number of times the base web page is accessed by users. The “click-through” ratio, however, does not provide information relative to the amount of interaction by the user with the advertisement on the web page without actually “clicking on,” or activating, the advertisement space. Therefore, the present invention is directed an improved system and method for obtaining web page advertisement user interaction data.